A team of scientists discovered a new species of wolves that were hiding in plain sight as a jackal.
According to Reuters, authors of a study published in the journal Current Biology were able to find a distinct species of wolves that look an awful lot like a species of jackals. In Europe, the animal is known as the golden jackal, but the researchers want to name the African animal the golden wolf.
"This represents the first discovery of a 'new' canid species in Africa in more than 150 years," Klaus-Peter Koepfli, of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C., said in a press release.
For their study, the researchers examined a deep volume genetic data pertaining to the canines.
"To our surprise, the small, golden-like jackal from eastern Africa was actually a small variety of a new species, distinct from the gray wolf, that has a distribution across North and East Africa," Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA, said in the release.
The unique discovery raises the global total of canine species to 36, Reuters noted. While the golden jackal lives in parts of southern Europe and southern Asia, the golden wolf is mostly found in the northern and eastern regions of Africa. Both species have been spotted in the Middle East.
"We find no evidence of the Eurasian golden jackal occurring in continental Africa," Koepfli told Reuters. "One of the main takeaways of our study is that even among well-known and widespread species such as golden jackals, there is the potential to discover hidden biodiversity, and that such discoveries are made even more possible by using data sampled from whole genomes."
